


The Right Time

by vorokis



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Dadgil Week (Devil May Cry), Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:33:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22393342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vorokis/pseuds/vorokis
Summary: It’s some months before Nero’s allowed into his father’s study—allowedbecause there’s a careful, complex negotiation of space and territory taking place between Vergil and Dante in the Devil May Cry. Laws are being rewritten, the borders of an existing nation redrawn, the silhouette of a new land altogether emerging.Nero wades into the middle of it each time he visits, his skin prickling in electric recognition of demon presence and danger, while the rest of him echoes with a conflicting sense of belonging and not belonging. It's worse with his father—a stranger, a threat, one half of his blood—around.Standing at the door of Vergil’s study, Nero tries not to feel awkward.
Relationships: Dante & Nero (Devil May Cry), Kyrie/Nero (Devil May Cry), Nero & Nico (Devil May Cry), Nero & Vergil (Devil May Cry)
Comments: 47
Kudos: 412
Collections: My favorite stories





	The Right Time

**Author's Note:**

> me, nov 2019: gonna write 500 words for each dadgil week prompt i like! :D  
> me, feb 2020, almost 16k on my hands: i, like jon snow, know nothing.
> 
> shout out to beloved Laire for her support, feedback, and patience with my whining as this fic grew longer and longer! infinite thanks also to S for all her help and to discord friendos who also supported and encouraged me <3
> 
> i tried to hit a whole bunch of prompts: fight, book, training, nightmares, music, fear, orphan (in a lazy way), protection, heirloom (also in a v lazy way). i also amped up Nero's PTSD a bit in this fic; i hope it still works for you and that you enjoy the story.

It’s some months before Nero’s allowed into his father’s study— _allowed_ because there’s a careful, complex negotiation of space and territory taking place between Vergil and Dante in the Devil May Cry. Laws are being rewritten, the borders of an existing nation redrawn, the silhouette of a new land altogether emerging. 

Nero wades into the middle of it each time he visits, his skin prickling in electric recognition of demon presence and danger, while the rest of him echoes with a conflicting sense of belonging and not belonging. It's worse with his father—a stranger, a threat, one half of his blood—around. 

Standing at the door of Vergil’s study, Nero tries not to feel awkward. The air is different here, prohibiting, density to it that might push back in warning if he touches. 

Suppressing the urge to cough loudly, Nero says, “Hey.” Or blurts it out, maybe. 

His father's sitting at his desk, eyes fixed on what seems to be some kind of map sepia-toned from age. He doesn’t turn his head, though he spares an absent murmur of, “Nero,” in acknowledgment. 

Limned by the bright, plump sunlight streaming along the length of the room, Vergil cuts a figure gently gilded, gently stark. It reminds Nero of those classical statues displayed in stuffy museums on the mainland, the dead-eyed emperors and warrior gods with their exact lines and cold perfection. Apathetic judges of the world who saw everything and gave away nothing. 

Nero had only felt uncomfortable under their unrelenting gaze. It escapes him what the appeal is in all that marble. He prefers living things. Things with color and animation, warmth and vivacity. Things unlike what his father is. 

“You busy?” Nero asks. “Am I interrupting?” 

“You are,” says Vergil.

“How ‘bout next time you just say I’m not? You know, at least pretend to be nice—oh, wait, you don’t know.” 

“And yet clearly I do, because I’m still letting you stand there and talk.”

"Great,” Nero says, nodding his head a few times in mock approval. “This is just what I dragged my ass all the way over here to hear.” 

“Perhaps you ought to re-evaluate your priorities,” Vergil replies, following something on the map with a careful finger. ”You might as well step in now instead of loitering at the door.”

It’s as good an invitation as Nero’s likely to get, so he takes it, jamming his hands into his coat pockets, stepping in. 

Almost immediately, he wants to step back. A violent flinch nearly judders free along him the moment air packed tight with his father’s claim closes noose-tight around him. His demon rattles at its bars, snarling, battle-ready. Nero grits his teeth, forcing it to back off and settle down. 

The feeling doesn’t pass entirely. He pretends not to feel the serrated weight of that claim abrading his skin as he slowly explores the clean, elegant repository of knowledge his father’s study is already becoming. Wooden bookcases half-populated with an array of titles line the walls, curling around to reach right up to Vergil’s desk. Nero perfunctorily pulls books out as he walks along, their dry, rich paper scent radiating out with each flick of the pages. It’s mostly literature—old poetry and plays by authors whose names Nero isn’t wholly sure how to pronounce, but he gets the gist: lots of dead people stuff—but then he hits the inner bookcases, the ones that make him frown and look closer, then closer again, until he catches the strange, minute shivers interrupting the flow of air like heat haze.

After a moment’s consideration, Nero reaches out again. The ornate spine of a tome settles cool in his hand. It has a strange scent to it. Sterile. Chemical. Reminds him of antiseptic. He glances over the geometric pattern flowing down the leather cover in a lattice structure, before he turns the cover over. Tries to, at least.

Oddly, the book doesn't open. His fingertips—hum. Nero tries again, but there's no give at all as if the entire thing's been soldered firmly shut, and though he continues to tug, the book remains stubborn. 

“Having trouble?” his father asks, ‘cause naturally Vergil would finally turn his head and deign to give Nero his attention right then, right when Nero’s in the middle of fighting with a book and somehow fucking _losing_.

Nero stops. Settles his hands more calmly around the book like the (relatively) normal person he likes to believe he is. “Something wrong with this thing or what?” he asks gruffly.

“Nothing’s wrong with it at all,” Vergil replies.

“Yeah? Must be just me then, but I thought not being able to open a book kinda stops you from reading it.” 

“Then figure out how to open it.” 

“So it _i_ _s_ some magic bullshit.”

“Merely a joke on the author’s part. ‘ _The Intricacies of Apotropaic Spellwork_.’ In other words: protective magic. Wards. If you can undo the ward sealing the book shut, you've demonstrated the level of proficiency needed to understand its contents.” 

Nero looks at the book again, imagining glistening threads running along the lines of the geometric pattern, weaving delicately into an elaborate lock. “Sounds like a real best-seller.” 

“It was, actually,” Vergil says dryly. 

Slotting the book back into place, Nero pulls out a slimmer tome next, one that mercifully opens with ease only to bring him to a pause when he sees what's inside, the script that's aberrant with its blunt, angular shapes, reminiscent of the ancient stone carvings left behind by early civilizations. "I know this," he says slowly, carefully. "I’ve seen it around on jobs. This is...demon language." 

On an impulse wholly their own, his fingers hover over the letters. Nero can sense it, the—age, the primordial breath of the language, born long before the first human ever came into existence. That fanged, clawed, winged part of him always restlessly prowling in the dark pauses suddenly in its prowling. It cocks its head. Inches forward, intrigued, like it's being drawn in by a song, like it already understands what’s being sung.

"—concern you?" Vergil says, and Nero nearly startles, coming back to himself all of a sudden, wondering how long he’s been staring at the page for the sound of his father’s voice to catch him off guard.

"What?" Nero says. 

"I asked,” Vergil says, his small lingering over the two words giving away that Nero’s slip-up was noticed, "if it concerns you that I have reading material in infernal tongue.”

If there’s a mocking undertone to his father’s question or if he’s genuinely curious, Nero can’t tell. 

“ _Should_ I be concerned?” he replies, his fingers curling inwards, retreating from the call of the words on the page, although his eyes still continue to linger. 

It’s not something he’s considered much, demonic language. Or demonic languages, maybe. If the sound a demon makes when it fights him, when it dies from his blows, is less a sound made instinctively by the body ‘cause that’s just what the body does, or if it’s something more. A word. A plea. 

Abruptly, Nero feels uneasy. 

His hands move quick, shoving the tome back into where he’d plucked it out of. He’s aware that Vergil is watching. That Vergil can _see_ Nero, catalog his reactions like they’re scientific phenomenon. 

Nero’s not given to dissembling, never has been and he knows it, always letting everything slip out onto his face, slide out of his mouth, unvarnished and too sincere, too real. He’s never more aware of it than when he’s near his father, who is written in cipher, who keeps himself a closed system. Something that necessitates careful navigation. This should be easier, Nero thinks, after having met his father’s humanity in the flesh, but it's only harder, a puzzle that comes together to compose every other image than the one you expect it to.

“Infernal speech makes the human throat bleed,” Vergil says. “It’s too harsh. Every sentence will taste like a fresh wound.”

“You know that from experience?”

“Yes."

“Figures that even their language causes harm.”

“What do you suppose human languages feel like to demonkind? There’s a reason only the more evolved demons bother to speak it.”

“I’m guessing you also know that from experience.”

“Empirical evidence is always valuable,” Vergil says smoothly, a cool, neutral statement meticulously carved empty of any indications as to why he'd cut his human throat on demonic language. Why he'd ever uttered human words in his demon form. If the pain had troubled him at all. “The most innocuous of things,” his father continues, “can easily transform into a source of pain. Everything has the potential for it. The capacity.” 

“What, you want me to feel sorry for ‘em now?”

“Hardly. You should consider learning demonspeak, however; it would prove useful in your profession.”

“No,” Nero says easily. His skin itches. Tenses. He already has them in his blood; he doesn’t want their voice in his throat, their words on his tongue. “I don’t wanna know their language.” 

“Your language also, Nero."

“But you know,” Nero says. “You of all people know what it’s like to not want a part of you.”

Not that Nero could ever understand choosing the demon over the human. 

“Precisely,” Vergil replies. He stands and comes over to the same bookcase, plucking out a book with the ease of someone operating out of memory. “This was written by one of the older witch clans who unfortunately suffered from a fondness for firearms.” He offers it with a tilt of his wrist. “There are some chapters on the augmentation of gun ammunition. You might find it worth your time; if not you, then your friend, Nico.” 

“Thought you didn’t approve of guns.”

“I don’t," Vergil says. 

The book has its own peculiar pattern on the cover, possibly an emblem, a marker of the witch clan’s identity, and when Nero takes hold of it, it doesn’t have the little tug that indicates demon language, no song that could enthrall his demon, and that's a good thing. Nero’s glad about it. No reason for him to be anything else.

* * *

On occasion, he and Vergil spar, which means on occasion Nero's the lucky fucker who gets to eat dirt. 

His father's brutality is methodical and serene, killing sleekly rendered into a smooth science. It’s a steady, patient stalk at first, an animal at hunt circling attentively, and then it’s whip-crack _fast_ , a force that refuses to be stopped, and Nero wonders if it’s not that his father is too quick, but that everything else is too slow. If Vergil's eyes only see a world that works to some sort of time delay, a stumbling, bumbling creature he always has to wait for. 

Nero feels like that stumbling, bumbling creature when Vergil looks at him, when he blandly says, “Predictable.” When he controls his strength and pulls his punches as if Nero needs the help, and Nero snarls, charging towards the thin-sickle smile of ruthless mirth on his father's face. 

It happens in quick succession: light, crystalline and blinding, detonates; the inky shaft of the Yamato’s scabbard glints; Nero crashes, hard, onto the ground.

A yell strains out from behind his gritted teeth. His body shudders and shudders, his demon form forced into fleeing, and the departure leaves him hollow, leaves him limp. The world changes, loses sharpness, some of its rich color and song. It _diminishes_ —and isn't that some ironic shit right there, demonic senses perceiving more of the human world than any human ever could? Nero gets hit with that disorientating moment that always hits every time his demon retreats, a handful of seconds where Nero thinks he’s not seeing, hearing, smelling right, and he has to remember that he _is_ still right, he’s just human again, that’s all. 

Muted down now, his power is a dully staggering whisper in his blood, the sluggish slivers left of it struggling to cohere. A burning ache pulses in his muscles. A crescendo pulses in his chest. 

“This is embarrassing, Nero,” Vergil says, standing over him still clothed in human skin. His shadow is a cool slice of air. The tip of the Yamato’s sheath—not even her fucking blade—is an inch away from Nero’s throat. “You can’t be done already. It's only been an hour.”

The insult is deliberate. Is the point. Vergil goads and provokes him on purpose because Nero leaps to answer; can’t stop himself from it like a chemical reaction helplessly prone to instability, sparking explosively. 

“You still telegraph too much."

“Must’ve stolen all your ability to emote,” Nero snaps back. 

“Pity you’re not as quick in a fight as you are with what you think is a wit," Vergil replies, the monster behind his eyes staring down at Nero with a bored sort of equanimity as if he’s already killed him a hundred times over in his mind.

Nero hasn’t forgotten that his father is dangerous, the most dangerous thing there is to him. He’ll never forget it: Vergil’s cold fingers seizing his arm, wrenching it off, his strength vicious and unendurable even in the sickly state he’d shown up in, and Nero’s body, weak as a child’s doll, yielding like it had simply been fulfilling its respective part in some sordid transaction.

The staccato in Nero’s chest refuses to slow down, drumming loud enough that it’s another pulse in his ears. Something else in him, something hidden (something in hiding), shivers delicately. He suppresses the instinct to touch his right arm. Irrationally, he thinks: he's gonna tear it off again.

Vergil looks at him as if he can see that thought. Smell it like it’s blood in the water for him to breathe in, chase after with a demon's hunger, and so easily, he could just—Vergil could—

But he merely lowers his katana and steps away.

Nero doesn’t let that deceive him. Useless as it is right now, he still maintains his guard, pushing himself up into a sitting position. “How come,” he says, forcibly pasting on a light tone, “you never use other Devil Arms like Dante does?”

His father raises an eyebrow. 

“Just askin’,” Nero says. 

“I did when I was younger, but the Yamato naturally remains beyond compare. I need nor want anything else.”

Vergil’s fingers move along his katana’s hilt almost intimately, the cherishing glide protective and possessive, containing a vow to never let go. 

Nero had held onto her for a time, but he’d known in his bones that the Yamato wasn’t his in the truest sense, that his not-quite-right blood wasn’t not quite right _enough._ She had her own loyalties, singing out into the world in search of someone, waiting, and eventually that song had been heeded, had been returned, and then she’d returned, too, in a hot spray of blood. 

“She’s a real good sword,” Nero agrees. Though he'd stuck to the familiar and wielded the Red Queen most often in the end, the Yamato had never failed him on the occasions he had reached out to her. 

Vergil makes a derisive sound that clearly indicates, _Understatement_. “She gave you the power you needed.” 

“She did, but I’m not—I’m not like you. I don’t _need_ power like that. Like it’s everything.” 

A streak cuts through the air, quick, ghostly, shimmering, resolving into a spectral sword that threatens Nero’s throat just as the Yamato’s sheath had. 

Nero’s body recognizes the darting blade before the rest of him does; he flinches, rearing back. And then, when his father does nothing more, Nero glares up angrily and that merely seems to please Vergil. 

“But there it is,” Vergil says, languid, drawling. “Right there in your eyes. A desperate desire to win. If only you were stronger. If only you had more power.” 

A denial rushes to Nero’s mouth. It’s also a lie, heavy and sour, that he has to swallow back down. “I would never go as far as you,” he says instead. 

“No, but then we have not lived the same lives, so spare me the self-righteousness. I wonder if you'd still be saying the same if something tragic was to befall Kyrie and the children you care so much for.” 

It’s almost slyly ensnaring, the way his father says it. As though he’s planting the idea and has already uncovered all the times Nero’s privately admitted to himself the lengths he would go to in order to protect Kyrie and the kids, the terrible, unthinkable lengths even if it meant his own annihilation. 

Nero's spine goes rigid, the rest of him locking up along with it. “What’s that supposed to mean?" 

“Settle down. It’s merely conjecture.” 

"Don't talk to me like I'm a child!" 

"Don't think like one. You know the world to be complex." 

“It’s not what they would want for me,” Nero says and pretends he isn’t sidestepping the question and that Vergil won’t notice. “They'd never want me to lose myself like that.” 

“Then you should hope there never comes a day when you’re tested on that front,” Vergil says. He retracts the spectral sword. “Shall we resume? Maybe you’d even like my brother’s assistance against me again.”

Nero bares his teeth and reaches inwards, snatching up all the wispy, fizzing tendrils of strength that haven’t deserted him yet. He won’t be able to wear his demon form again anytime soon, but he still has his fists and the Red Queen and Blue Rose and he surges up with those to the sound of Vergil’s chuckle. 

* * *

Despite himself—or maybe not so despite himself—he comes to grow fond of his father’s study. It seems to be the brightest, warmest room in the shop, always steeped in gold like the sunlight's helplessly drawn there, suffering from a fondness of its own. 

Dante shares his jobs with Vergil now and Vergil completes some alone, coming back with eccentric little finds that Nero plucks off of the shelves: another weird-looking book designed to maybe or maybe not make him feel like an idiot; a seemingly ordinary ornament with magic subtly weaved into its core; a clever metallic devil trap that Vergil deftly disassembles into its individual parts, explaining its seen and unseen mechanisms as Nero watches closely. 

On one side of Vergil's desk, a small black plant appears, its leaves dappled with silver bursts like little explosions of stars. Its counterpart sits on Dante's desk in the room below, glittering strangely soothingly—something about the energy it gives off, beneficial to demonic constitution. Then a chaise longue, plush and expensive-looking, is installed where the sunlight tends to pool most thickly in the room. Nero's kinda weak to sprawling down onto it; almost falls asleep there a few times when it gets too comfortable, but always careful to keep his boots off. 

Sometimes, though, he goes and the door is closed and Dante offers a simple, “He’s gone on a walk.” 

“A walk?”

“Yeah. You know, when you put one foot in front of the other and—“

“ _I mean_ ," Nero interrupts, "so he’s still in town?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. He’s got the Yamato on him; he could be on the other side of the world right now for all we know. He ever tell you he used to travel, trying to find out more about our old man?"

It was why his father had been in Fortuna in the first place. Once in a while, as he's making his way through town, Nero glances down the cobbled streets and pictures them as they might have been twenty five years ago, when Vergil had passed through them, retracing his own father's steps, meeting Nero's mother somewhere along the way, a brief encounter where no names and no promises had been exchanged. 

The times Vergil returns while Nero is still there, he reveals nothing about where he's been, if it was just the edge of the city or the silky desert dunes of a far-off continent. He nods in greeting, shares a cryptic glance with Dante, an encoded message. 

They’re tied together by this secret language, his father and his uncle. They're tied together by things they won't talk about or will talk around or reference obliquely, with half-sentences and vague gestures. A history steeped in blood, from what Nero gathers, shrouded in darkness. 

He remembers the first time, the only time, he’d asked where Vergil had been for more than two decades. 

"The Underworld," Vergil had answered, flat and laconic, while Dante's easy smile had suddenly turned brittle, suddenly waned, and with the seamless synchronicity that was bizarrely native to them, their eyes had fallen on Nero like twin anvils.

Nero's demon had turned wary in the cage of his skin. He couldn't see it, but he could sense it, the grim thing he’d invoked with his question. A horror he'd unknowingly brought right into the room with them, its breath cold against the back of his neck, its fingers freezing the length of his spine.

Vergil and Dante had said nothing more and Nero had not asked further. 

The thing is, he doesn’t really know Dante all that well, either. Where Vergil prefers not to let you see anything at all, Dante lets you see only what he wants you to see. At most, Nero's talked to him infrequently over the years, Dante something like a friendly, benevolent stranger, generous from afar—but only so much apparently. Only when it comes to things that aren’t Vergil. 

Once, when his father is absent again, Nero says, “Never really took him as the type to go on walks.”

“Me, neither. I just know it helps and that’s all that really matters.”

"Are you really all right with it? Him disappearing like this?"

"This isn't his prison, kid," Dante says lightly, too lightly, the warning sitting higher up in the inhuman sharpness and gleam of his eyes, "and I'm not his jailer. He's free to go on as many walks as he likes." 

"I know, I don't mean it like that. I just." Nero runs a frustrated hand through his hair. Makes a gesture clumsy and incomprehensible even to himself. "You know."

Dante's face eases up, doing that thing where he sighs without sighing. "It's hard. I get it. I get it more than anyone else." 

"Is that why you never told me about him," Nero asks, and watches Dante sit back in his chair, guarded again, a house about to board itself up. “Can you give me the truth this time?”

"I," Dante begins. It takes some minutes before he can continue. “I wanted to—protect.” 

Nero waits for him to finish the sentence. Dante doesn't, and it's left to hang there limply in the air, alone and incomplete. 

“Protect what?" 

It tastes almost like a question Nero shouldn’t be asking, like he's digging his fingers into a wound and beyond, into soft, frail viscera. The unarmored parts and private vulnerabilities he hadn't even known Dante could have. They share that, too, Dante and Vergil, that quality of unknowability as if they're countries you could never fully discover. No matter how hard you tried to map them out, there'd always be something left undetected: a valley full of things unsaid, an entire species of secrets that would never see the light. 

“All of us," Dante says, "from all of it. You can't tell me this is the kind of family you'd ever imagined for yourself. Me and Vergil and the shit we've been through, the shit we’ve done to each other, makes for a piss-poor inheritance, and I...I wanted to leave the past in the past. I didn't want to face those mistakes again." He swallows. Rasp-soft, he says, "Mine more than his."

"'Cause you were the one who..."

Killed Vergil. Kept him from Nero. Kept keeping him from Nero with his selfish, cowardly silence. 

I didn't even get to mourn him, Nero thinks. I didn't even know there was someone to mourn for. 

But he shoves those cruel words down, down, down, where their unforgiving thorns can hurt nobody except for him. 

Dante's jaw tightens minutely like he's heard them anyway. "It was me," he says. 

Nero's turn to be silent now, to be the one fumbling for words, throat taut inside like it's been crammed full anyway. "And him?" he asks. "What were you protecting him from?"

Dante smiles and it's nothing that could be called a smile at all. "The judgment of his own son."

A catastrophic failure, then. 

“I had a right to know,” Nero says, not arguing, exactly, not wanting to argue, not when Dante had that terrible bleakness in his eyes, on his mouth, so alien and wrong on a face that frequently draped itself in some kind of levity. “Just...let me make decisions like that for myself. You'd be mad, too, if you had that kind of decision taken away from you.”

"Yeah," is all Dante says. Suddenly, he seems so tired. Weary. Like that guy from that one book in Vergil’s study: Atlas, condemned to carrying the weight of the heavens, shoulders straining under the burden of it. The sheer, unrelenting burden. 

They’ve barely spoken, it feels like, but when Nero checks, an hour has somehow elapsed. "You want a drink?" he asks, already turning away, knowing that to do so marks the end of this particular conversation and willing to let that happen. 

Brandy’s not his thing, but it’s what Nero finds first and he’s pouring some into two glasses when Dante speaks again. 

“I know you got questions, Nero. For him. But you're not gonna get answers for all of ‘em. Probably not even for most. Some things you don’t wanna know. Some things he doesn't even know anymore and some things are only meant for him to know. That’s _his_ right.”

“His and yours, you mean.” 

“No,” Dante says. “Not even mine.”

* * *

But then—then come the dreams. The nightmares. They come without warning, following some pattern that Nero wishes he could pin down and slice apart at the seams. 

It's usually the same thing: the garage again, yellow-lit like a picture stained by an oil spill, and him, the torn red flesh and white bone pieces of him, strewn across the ground, thrown there casually by his father’s methodically, serenely brutal hands.

Vergil isn’t as he was that day, raggedly cloaked, steadily disintegrating. His clothes gleam with an unnatural lustre. His skin is moonlight-radiant. He is whole and unmarred, strong and untouchable. An immaculate creature come down from the sky, out of place among the detritus of mortal mediocrity. Disgusted by it. 

The dismantling happens so easily. The sea of Nero’s flesh parts in neat fissures. His bones fracture with paper smoothness as if separating along predestined lines. There is so much to his body in these dreams. So much softness and endless fragility. So much to be destroyed, and it is destroyed, discarded piece by piece till Vergil gets to the vital core, the heart heavy as ripened fruit, pulsing in his hand like a trapped bird as he regards it with nonchalant eyes. 

“How useless and regrettable it is to be born human,” he says, coolly contemptuous. “How useless and regrettable you are, Nero.”

An easy tightening of his hand, an easy crushing of Nero’s heart. Nero’s useless, regrettable human heart. 

* * *

He won't visit for a while after these dreams. He'll lie in bed, careful not to fall asleep, and stroke his fingers through Kyrie’s hair while she dreams for them both. He'll go on uneventful jobs and watch the landscape drift by him as Nico drives them down winding roads. He'll pick up the kids from school and let them chatter excitedly about their day and take turns sitting on his shoulders. 

He'll stay away until that hidden and hiding thing inside of him can bring itself to stop shivering.

* * *

Unsurprisingly, Nico pores over the book Vergil had given him, the one written by the clan of gun-slinging witches. She mutters to herself as she reads, adjusting her glasses now and then, scribbling quick notes into her notebook. 

The house is empty save for the two of them lingering in the living room. Nero’s pushed aside the threadbare curtains to look outside. A girl whips past on her bicycle, her bright hair soaking up afternoon sunshine; she laughs care-freely when a boy, older, reedier, gives chase on his own bike, and together they weave their way out of sight. 

Nero drums his fingers impatiently against the window sill. 

“You think it’s fucked up that I haven’t just walked away from my father?” 

“Finally," Nico mutters. "Was wondering when you were gonna spit it out." 

“‘Cause it is, right?” Nero continues, turning back 'round to face her where she's sitting cross-legged on the sofa. “Fucked up? Considering what he did to me, let alone everything else he’s done? What does that say about me?”

Nico’s eyes are still on the page, her thumb and forefinger pinching its edge. She doesn't flip it over, but Nero can tell she isn't exactly reading anymore and he gets struck by a pang of regret, knowing he’s dredged up bad memories for her, poked at her own sore spot. 

“That what you want to hear?” Nico says. Her loose hair is a thick, dark cascade falling over one shoulder. “You want me to say you’re messed up for visiting him? Bringing back what he gives you?” 

“Yeah, if that’s what you honestly think.” 

“Here’s what I honestly think, Nero: you're a straightforward kinda guy so you’re looking for some straightforward kinda answer here, but there ain’t none. I’d’ve been more surprised if you hadn’t wanted to know him.”

“Really?”

“Well, duh.” Nico lifts up her head, points at his chest with the pen in her hand. “You’re the softest softie I ever met," she says, grinning at the roll of his eyes. "Got a big ol’ marshmallow for a heart under that prickly shell and that’s not a bad thing. Far from it, I’d say.” 

Nero crosses his arms, gesturing with his head at the book. “Definitely not a bad thing if you get something decent to read out of it, right?”

“I’m glad we understand each other.” Nico turns the page finally, though she still doesn’t resume reading. Her grin falls away, brows pulling down, uncharacteristically solemn. “‘Least your daddy wants to know you. He came back, didn’t he? More than anything my one ever did. That counts for something.” 

“I didn’t know if he would. If he _could_ even come back.”

“But some part of you was hoping for it," Nico says, knowing, and she's right—Nero had been hoping.

Against his better judgment, he’d believed Vergil when he’d said he would return and he'd held onto that belief, entwined it with frail hope, and tucked it safe in his chest alongside the heart his father would crush in Nero's dreams. 

“You’re not fucked up, Nero. You just wanna know your dad. That don’t make you a bad person. It just makes you a..." Nico shrugs. "A person.” 

Nero nods, small, grateful. But he and Nico aren’t exactly what you would call the warm and fuzzy brand of friends, so he also says, “I’m a person, huh. I never knew that. Thanks for letting me in on the truth.” 

“Since you're being an asshole again, I'm assuming we're done with your little crisis? 'Cause I still got a lot left to read and this house ain’t gonna stay quiet for much longer.”

“I'm done," Nero says, though they both know he's not really and won’t be for some time. "Feel free to go back to ignoring me.”

“Oh, I do feel free," Nico replies enthusiastically. "I really, really do, but thanks anyhow for the permission I didn’t need."

* * *

Middle of the night finds Nero tilting his head as he listens to footsteps tread softly down the hallway, down the stairs, and head into the kitchen. He follows, slipping out of the bedroom quietly, leaning against the kitchen doorway to watch Carlo stand up on the tips of his toes and do his level best to reach the loaf of bread on the counter-top. 

“You need some help there, buddy?” Nero asks, taking pity on the little guy, and Carlo lands squarely back on his feet with a comical startle, whirling around fast with his dark eyes all wide. He’s small, even for his age, barely reaching Nero’s thigh. His expression turns sheepish, a look that Kyrie teasingly insists Carlo has in common with Nero. 

“I was just…”

“Late night munchies? Yeah, I know how that goes.” Nero rights himself and walks over, reaching for a plate. “One sandwich and then back to bed, all right? It can be our little secret.”

Carlo brightens at once, face all squished up by his grin. “Our little secret,” he agrees conspiratorially. 

“Peanut butter?” Nero asks. 

“And bananas.” 

“That’s what I like to hear. You’re shaping up to be a man of good taste.” 

Once they’ve assembled their sandwiches and filled two glasses with water, they sit at the table, Carlo swinging his legs back and forth as he eats.

“Did I wake you up?” he asks in between his neat little bites. His tousled chestnut hair needs cutting, keeps getting in his eyes so he has to swipe it away every few minutes. 

“Nah, I was already awake.”

"Why?"

"Why?" Nero repeats. "'Cause...it's just hard, sometimes, to sleep, you know?"

Carlo nods. “Sometimes I get nightmares," he says, "and then I can't sleep, and sometimes I can't sleep 'cause I..." He glances in the direction of the front door like that's the rest of his answer. 

Nero tussles the kid's hair lightly. "I know," he says. "I know."

"You're not mad?"

"Why would I be? I used to do the same thing." 

They’re connected by it, by the hope, the waiting. By the fact of being orphans. It's not just Nero and the kids, but also Vergil and Dante, like an affliction that’s been passed down the generations regardless of blood. 

By the time he’s done eating, Carlo’s sleepy again, cooperating easily with Nero as they get their plates and their hands washed and not thinking twice as he raises his arms up in a silent request to be carried.

“You’re getting too big for this,” Nero says, a meaningless protest 'cause he's already giving in, lifting Carlo up. A circle of heat briefly sinks through his shirt and into his shoulder where Carlo buries his yawn. 

He's careful as he takes Carlo back to bed, unduly careful, exceedingly aware of what he holds in his arms. More often these days, panic, a great seizure of it, strikes him breathless when he’s around the children, their softness, their endless fragility. His demon is closer to the surface than it used to be and the kids are still so delicate, so trusting, not knowing how to be anything else. There is so much to even their little bodies, so much that can be destroyed. 

After Carlo's buried beneath his covers again and Nero's hushed Julio and Kyle back into sleep, Nero just stands in the hallway outside because he doesn't know what to do. Or he does know what to do—what he always did at times like these when he felt fidgety, restlessness a hummingbird trapped within his muscles—but it's not as easy anymore, being in the garage. 

That first time after the attack, sneaking out through it so that Kyrie didn’t know he was leaving, he’d felt an urge to throw up, just about managed to hold it in using pure will. 

And then, another time: pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes, his teeth gritted, strained by a long, shredded noise like crying but not crying. Not quite human enough. The sound of an animal still carrying its wound in its healed skin. 

Nico might've heard. She hasn't said anything. She might know why he makes himself go in anyway: 'cause he has to, 'cause he won't accept having a space in his own home he can't be in. 

Sitting at the entrance of the garage, Nero breathes in the cool, gasoline-tinged air. He looks at the ground clean of any bloodstains. Looks at his right arm. 

Slowly, he curls his fingers into a fist and then opens that fist. He closes it again, watching the muscles beneath the thin skin of his wrist shift faintly. The creases in his palm deepen, relax, deepen again. Someone, somewhere, would be able to look at those creases and see his life, his future, his death. 

All Nero sees is a harmonious puzzle of human flesh and bone that he’d never believed would return to him. Impossible, he’d thought, but the potential for that impossibility had lived in his body all along, coming to vibrant fruition with all the violence of a freshly born wildfire. 

_Potential_. Capacity, his father had said that day in his study. A thing’s unexpected capacity to shift from innocuous to dangerous. 

And the reverse? Could the reverse be true? Could a monster have its own impossible potential, impossible capacity, for kindness? Could it hold a child in its arms and keep that child safe from its own claws?

 _No_ , Nero would've said a few years ago at nineteen. Easily and without hesitation. A simple question with a single answer. 

But he isn't the person he was a few years ago. He's not even the person he was a few months ago.

* * *

“ _Hey, kid_ ,” Dante says when Nero picks up the phone.

"Don't call me that," Nero replies automatically and frowns ‘cause it’s not like his uncle’s in the habit of calling him up.

“ _Wasn’t sure if you were gonna be dropping by anytime soon,_ ” Dante continues as if Nero hadn’t said anything, “ _but I thought I’d give you a heads-up and let you know Vergil and me are gonna be out of town for a week_.” 

“Oh,” Nero says. “All right. Job taking you out far?” 

“ _Eh, this one's more of a vacation._ "

"Vacation? You take vacations now?"

“ _I sure do. Dunno if you've ever heard of it, but we're heading to Vie de Marli. It's a ye olde kinda island like Fortuna, but with a lot more skyscrapers sprinkled into all that medieval 'cause they gotta keep up with the kids somehow. I’m gonna see an old friend again while I’m out there and they got enough artifacts to keep Vergil happy_.”

“Cool,” Nero says. “OK, yeah. Thanks for letting me know.” 

" _Don't mention it and don't get into any trouble we gotta cut short our vacation to rescue you from_."

This is where Nero's supposed to shoot back something about nonagenarians being careful not to fall on their asses in case they can't get up, but it's instead where he hesitates and they lapse into an awkward silence. 

It only gets worse when Dante says, " _You wanna talk to Vergil, right_?” and there's a muffled sound followed by some rustling. “ _Hey, Verge, get over here. Your kid’s missing you_!”

"What?" Nero says in what is absolutely not an indignant squawk. “No, I, what—shut up, Dante! Don’t say embarrassing shit like that!”

“ _You should already know the redundancy of that request,_ " replies very much not Dante. " _My brother is far too gifted at being a nuisance to ever willingly give it up_." 

Nero's very careful to keep his grip on the phone relaxed. “You're right," he says. "What was I thinking?” 

In the background, Dante's usual brand of melodrama: " _What's that, brother? I'm gifted? You're gonna make me feel spe—oof. All right, all right_ ," and then a pointed silence that still somehow articulates Dante's probably making a quick, zipping gesture over his mouth. 

“So," Nero says stiffly. "I hear you’re going away for the week.” 

“ _I always intended to visit Vie de Marli. It has an interesting history; the clan guarding the island once fought alongside my father_.”

My grandfather, Nero thinks. Sparda. The demon who could love and had loved and now Nero stands here because of it. 

There are enough statues of him in Fortuna, looming large and domineering so that you always had to tilt your head backward to look up the intimidating length of him and still never be able to meet god's gaze directly. Not that it mattered; you would never get anything out of that apathetic gaze, just like those ancient statues in the museums. Just like Vergil. 

“Maybe I’ll check it out one day,” Nero says. “You can let me know how it goes next time I visit.” 

“ _If you want to_.” 

Nero does want to, even if the smarter thing to do might be to stay the fuck away. “I will,” he says, "after you get back.” 

“ _I’ll be here_ ,” Vergil says steadily, and Nero's reminded of his father back on the Qlipoth, throwing his book of poetry in Nero's direction, just as steady-voiced back then as he'd told Nero to hold onto it, making in not so many words a promise Nero had never expected.

* * *

Winters in a coastal town like Fortuna are a fucking pain and Nero’s not demon enough for the air to not sometimes knife into his lungs, hard to breathe, hard to swallow around. It’s not as bad here closer to Capulet, but Nero still tucks his face deeper under the protection of his scarf, muffling the white cloud of his breath beneath soft wool. 

As always, stepping through the doors of the Devil May Cry brings with it that spiky recognition of danger at the back of his neck, mitigated somewhat by the familiar, benign tableau of Dante at the desk, a magazine sitting over his face as he naps or pretends to nap. 

Nero glances 'round. There’s no miniature skyline composed of neglected, empty pizza boxes, just a tidy, warmly-lit office area. A smile tugs one corner of his mouth upwards. “Looks like he’s got you house-trained now.”

Dante lets out a grumbling sound, pulling the magazine off of his face. “Goddamn joke is what it is.” He makes a sharp little gesture with his head. “Been a while, kid.”

“Still not a kid. Some of us have to work for a living, you know.”

“Clearly, I don't, since I live in this fancy palace you see here, far, far away from you peasants.” 

Nero snorts. “You guys enjoy your trip to that place?” 

“Yeah, it was good. Think Vergil even cracked _two_ smiles five minutes apart. He’s on the roof, if you wanna have a chat.”

Nero blinks, surprised. Walking up to the shop, his senses had picked up only on the blithe thrumming of his uncle's languidly content presence. 

Dante shrugs. “He’s good at masking himself. Go on, go say hi. I got a lack-of-pizza situation here that I need to fix before the quality of life in this place deteriorates further.”

"The only thing deteriorating here is you, old man," Nero says as he goes to the stairs. 

Dante shakes his head, heaving a loud sigh. "Your manners are an abomination, Nero. More tragic than anything Shakespeare could've written."

"Yeah, yeah, I’ll be sure to cry myself to sleep over it." 

Up on the roof, Nero sees the sky first, pale as rock crystal, sunlight bleeding out cold and luminous where the steeple of a church cuts up into it. Then he sees his father, the silver smoothness of his hair, the straight set of his shoulders, and for a moment, Nero can't make himself take another step further, has to hang back at the door and remind himself that the dream-images of his slow mangling at Vergil’s hands were just that: dreams. 

"Hey," he says when he’s sure his voice is gonna come out fine.

His father's sitting on the edge. He fits seamlessly into the winter scene, pale and placid like a creature hewn from the heart of a glacier, seemingly impervious to the elements, but it’s also perceptibly warmer around Vergil, the chill in the air quelled within the radius of his body heat. Nero subtly angles himself towards that welcome warmth; if Vergil’s noticed, he doesn’t remark on it.

“Dante says you had a good time on your trip.”

“It was adequate.” 

Meaning: Vergil had a good time on the trip. 

“Bring back anything interesting?” Nero asks. Hiding his hands back in the protection of his coat pockets, he follows Vergil's gaze over to where it lingers on the pristine white of snow-blanketed streets. 

“A few. My collection of curiosities has grown since you last saw it.” 

“Thought it might have,” Nero says with affected calm. “Yeah, it’s been a few weeks since I dropped by. Got busy with the jobs and the kids.”

Silence.

Silence for long enough that Nero goes to speak again, intending to change subjects to something safer that doesn't make his throat wanna seal shut, only for his father to say, “I assume it doesn't help that you're also afraid of me,” like Nero's dreams are blood in the water Vergil can breathe in and Nero's treacherous heart—his regrettable, useless human heart—trips over itself in his chest. 

He opens his mouth. Closes it.

On some level, it’s true he's afraid. Or—wary, at least. A natural response in the presence of a stronger demon, coded into the blood of all living things. 

But there’s also all the other levels, the more dangerous ones, the other things Vergil could easily rip apart in Nero that have nothing to do with his body. 

“It’d be easier,” Nero says eventually, “if it was just about if I’m afraid of you or not.”

“What else is it about.”

“I don’t think this conversation is a good idea.” 

“Whereas it's far more preferable to go on ignoring that you run away from here every so often.”

Vergil’s gaze flicks away from the streets, settling on Nero.

Unsettling him, right down to his demon.

It’s a pressure he can’t abide, that gaze, and suddenly, just like that, Nero's back to being that chemical reaction so helplessly prone to instability and he sparks explosively with a blaze of crisp, bitter anger, spitting out, “I dream about you killing me back in that garage. Is that what you wanna hear?”

“Go on,” says his father, going for the gold in the Jackass Extraordinaire Olympics, and Nero, Nero's a generous guy, so he goes right ahead and fucking obliges. 

“You don’t stop at ripping off my arm. You rip the rest of me up, throw the pieces of my body on the ground like I don’t mean shit. Then you stand there with just my heart in your hand and you call me regrettable and useless 'cause I'm human—you remember those words? You said that crap to me before as Urizen—and after that—after that, you crush—" his voice wavers, disappears just for a second, comes back sounding like it’s been run through a shredder, "—you _crush_ my heart into fucking nothing. ‘Cause it doesn’t matter. _I_ don’t matter.” 

Nero shuts his mouth with a loud, painful clack. His breath comes out of him hard and abrupt, shuddering. 

“Why, then, do you persist in visiting?" Vergil says. "Why not cut off ties and move on with your life?”

'Cause Nero's angry, but not angry enough, apparently. Or ‘cause he’s fucking stupid enough or—

“Brave,” Kyrie had said that morning, her hands cupping his face. “You’re brave, Nero.”

He wishes, fiercely, that she were here right now with her wondrous ability to know just the right things to say to bring order back into the churning mayhem in his head.

Nero tries anyway, pulling another breath in, a slow inhale, an even slower exhale. Inhale again, exhale again. He uncurls his fingers from the rigid fists they've formed in his pockets. There's some slickness, like he's cut into his skin with claws. “There’s gotta be more to us than—what happened. There has to be.”

“‘There has to be,’” Vergil repeats. “It sounds as if you’re attempting to make yourself believe that.”

“Maybe,” Nero says. “Maybe I am trying to convince myself of it. Maybe this is all gonna blow up in my face, but...”

Later, in the van with his father's book of poetry in his hands, Nero had realized what he’d felt seeing Vergil for the first time: like something he’d been anticipating, so unknowingly that it had been a secret even to himself, had finally arrived. Some kind of waiting had finished. 

In spite of everything, walking away now doesn’t seem like it would be anything other than a loss. Before Vergil, he’d thought he’d already been living with that loss, but now, now Nero _knows_. He knows sunlit days in the unique charm of his father’s study. He knows strange conversations with more silence than words 'cause sometimes his father doesn't want to talk and sometimes he can't, his mind like a house with several locked rooms that he's thrown away the keys to. He knows that Dante's even quicker to smile these days, that Nero can’t always help his own smiles, either. 

He knows what he’d be losing, and the moment he’d learned what Vergil was, who he was—father, family, one half of Nero—Vergil had become something Nero couldn’t lose. 

"I just wanna see where this goes," Nero finishes. 

Silence again. 

"By the way, about your book, I'll remember to bring it with me next time. I know I was supposed to give it back already."

"No," says Vergil.

"No?"

"Keep it." 

And Nero hears them, the words behind the words. What his father is really saying. _I want to see where this is going, too._

At the first powdery specks drifting down, Nero glances up. Quickly, the small flickers grow and deepen into a more substantial haze of snowflakes, gently blurring the air, trying mischievously to cling to his eyelashes. He blinks to keep his vision clear. 

Vergil's head is tilted up a little as he watches the snowfall with a careful attention as if he hasn't seen snow in—

Well. He hasn't. Some of the flakes come to rest in his hair, glittering there like the beginnings of a bejeweled crown. 

“You don’t have to stay out here with me,” Vergil says. 

“I know,” Nero says and stays.

* * *

It had been easy to love and be loved by Kyrie’s parents. They had had a candidness to them, saying only things that they meant, meaning only what they meant. Their love was uncomplicated, a pure concentration lacking any shadows or danger. 

It’s the same love that’s been passed down onto Kyrie, carried in her kind eyes and gentle hands, shared so unreservedly by her everyday as if it’s inexhaustible, stemming from a well that would never run dry. 

Nero doesn’t love his father. Vergil doesn’t love Nero, either. And that’s all right. These things have to start somewhere.

* * *

The job's simple enough and easy pay: a Scarecrow infestation in one of the mines above Ferrum Hills.

The settlement at the heart of the Hills is once again quietly flourishing after its abrupt end five years ago. As he and Nico make their way through the village, Nero tries not to think about his own role in the incident; it's not as if he could've just stepped aside and rolled out a red carpet for that overgrown, literal hot mess of a fire demon to lumber its way into the rest of Fortuna for easy pickings.

Armed with her own little customized sidearm, Nico pats it proudly. “Don’t underestimate her just ‘cause I made her small. She packs a punch and you might even be lucky enough to see her in action today.” 

Far as Nero’s concerned, it’s her obnoxiously bright-as-sunshine yellow parka that’s the real weapon here.

Once they arrive at the mines, Nico waves him off to pursue her own investigation and Nero leaves her to it, following after tell-tale screeching laughter to find his targets. 

The Scarecrow nest is a breeze to eliminate. Nero ducks beneath the whirl of bladed demons, pulls out Blue Rose and fires off rounds without glancing, falling into well-worn rhythms of combat. Though he doesn't need it for a job so straightforward, his Trigger is there, one call away, waiting to painlessly singe him through. 

Nico finds him again as he's making his way back out, a particularly pleased grin on her face and a weirdly-formed bulge in one of her coat pockets that Nero _really_ doesn't want to know about.

"You got a problem, you know that? A condition."

"I'm an _artisan_. I wouldn't expect you to understand what that means." 

"Oh, believe me, I'm fine with not understanding. Means I don't go around—"

Nero pauses, coming to a halt halfway down the walkway Nico's standing on the opposite end of. 

"Means you don't go around doing what, pal?" Nico asks, glowering. 

"Hold on," he says, and turns his head towards the pool of water beneath the walkway. Its dark onyx surface is tranquil, a frozen sort of stillness. A scent taints the air beneath the mustiness of the mine: sterile, chemical, like antiseptic. Or like wards, the kind he’d heard about in his father’s study. 

"Why you staring at the water like you ain't seen water before?"

"I could be wrong," Nero says, crouching down, "but I don't think this is just water." Carefully, he bends forward, reaches down, grazes a finger against the surface. Hits something solid instead of breaking through. That particular zing that means magic shoots back up along the length of his finger. "See?"

Nico's eyes light up. She hurries over and crouches down next to him. "Looks like we got ourselves something interesting here."

"Smells like a ward. Feels like one, too. Just invisible. There's something under it, hidden." 

"Or in hiding." 

"Or in hiding." 

"You know how to open it?"

Nero touches the surface more firmly, splaying his fingers flat over its diamond hardness.

“The more delicate process is to steadily unpick the ward open as if it were a lock,” Vergil had said, his hand hovering over the spider web of a sorcerer's ward, its sharp glow lighting up his face in strange angles. “Of course, that would entail already knowing what specific magic has gone into the formation of the ward. For those of us not magically inclined, the faster, if cruder, method is to force the ward open by overwhelming it under the strength of our own energy.” 

Nero is no expert when it comes to magic, but force? Force, he's good at. So, pushing his palm against the ward, he wills that thrum of energy in the back of his mind to gather itself in his arm and pour down it in a torrent, make it hum the way his demonic arm used to.

Seconds pass and nothing happens. 

Nico fidgets. "Uh. Hate to break it to you, Nero, but that was a little anti-climactic." 

"Gimme a break, I haven't done this before," Nero shoots back. He rolls his shoulders and presses his hand harder against the ward. Imagines it struggling under the crush of his strength before it's compelled to give in, shattering into pieces that can’t be put together again. "C'mon," he mutters, pushing, pushing, pushing—

 _There_. Something wavers. Something cracks.

He can’t see it, but he feels it, the small rupture and shudder in the solidity beneath his hand. 

Nero smiles. "All right, now we're getting somewhere. I'm gonna—"

Except the ward then abruptly disappears.

It’s not an unlocking, just a simple, instantaneous vanishing. The firm barrier withdraws like it’s been called away and Nero’s hand plummets into the water, the rest of him following as an unrelenting grip rises up from beneath the ripples and chains itself around his wrist, yanking him down. 

"Nero!" Nico cries out, her hasty attempt to grab onto him not hasty enough, reduced to just a vague brush of her hands against the small of his back. 

The water’s filmy-thick; Nero blinks and blinks but it obscures too well, concealing the demon digging its claws into his arm right to the bone. The pain is bright and blistering, but Nero ignores it, forcing a punch through the resistance of the water. It earns him nothing but the faint scrape of his knuckles against scaly skin and the stab of more claws; his chest this time, blood turbulently pluming out of his mouth in long wisps. 

Get out here, he thinks at his demon. Shouts at him. Get out here, _get out here_.

He only gets back jarring silence.

No stir, nothing of the familiar restless pacing inside of him, but something else in its place, something spilling _out_ of him through the fresh gouges clawed into his body. Something of his being taken. Stolen.

A long, savage shot of panic slams its way through Nero. His yell breaks apart into a gurgle. He reaches back for the Red Queen, a move he's done countless times over the years, her hilt always loyally sliding into his grip, only she doesn't make it this time, his fingers fumbling ineffectually, growing suddenly rigid. The numbness spreads from his fingers to claim his arms, his shoulders, his spine, the entirety of him, turning him to lead or stone and Nero chokes on water, wonders frantically if it’ll merge with his breath and become a rock in his lungs, too. Hang there heavy and dense and impossible to break, his lungs frozen impotently around it.

His vision ripples at the edges before blurring, turning dimmer and dimmer. Turning black altogether, so that Nero sees nothing at all. 

He feels, instead, snatches of things. Hands on him, calloused and stained with the smell of cigarettes, grabbing at him violently at first but then gentling, taking care. The air shifts from chill to warm and even warmer. Strange tingling pinpricks like needles and pins lightly sting throughout his body. There are fingers in his hair at one point. A bitter medicinal taste in his mouth at another. 

Eventually, a scent, one that makes him think of arctic lakes, snow-capped mountains, crystallized blue fire. Feeling warm on a winter's day. 

“Dad,” he murmurs. 

Hushed, almost comforting as it brushes against the edges of Nero's consciousness: “Go back to sleep, Nero. You’re not healed yet.” 

So Nero sleeps.

* * *

It’s dark as he gradually resurfaces.

Weight bears down heavily on the back of his lids and slowly, stubbornly, Nero pushes against it until it reluctantly gives way, just enough that he can force out sluggish blinks, staring blearily up at a white ceiling lacking the specific arrangement of cracks he’s familiar with. 

The pillow beneath him and the comforter tucked around him carry only the ordinary clean scent of laundry detergent and the air in here is easier to breathe, nothing like the claim that had choked Nero the first time he’d stepped into Vergil’s study, but there’s still sufficient traces of that cool, sharp scent for Nero to know that this is his father’s room.

He turns the burden of his head to the side and has to close his eyes against a viciously bright streak of moonlight. Waiting, Nero carefully opens them again in a squint. When it’s easier, he sits up gingerly, the mild queasiness in his stomach roiling with his movement, and notices as he pulls back the comforter that he’s not wearing his own clothes anymore. The shirt hangs loose and somewhat long on him, falling beneath his hips. The baggy trousers have their ends rolled up to sit properly at his ankles. 

For a few more long beats, Nero just sits there, staring down unseeingly at his legs while he rummages through fuzzy memories, and when clarity comes back to him, he scrambles towards that nebulous space inside of him where his demon lives, reaches out beseechingly with his hands. 

There’s a flicker of response. A small, tired flutter of motion.

Nero's vaguely aching shoulders slump in harsh relief. 

He gets to his feet eventually, gets to the door, the light switch he can make out, slapping it with his hand and looking around the room. It’s tidy, but spare, far sparer than his father’s study. There's the bed with the nightstand, a closet, a chair with a folded quilt, and nothing much more, like Vergil's just a visitor in here or barely even that. 

“Gonna be honest with you,” Nero says, when the bedroom door opens. “A part of me didn't really think you actually slept. I've always seen you awake, no matter what time it is.”

“You’re not entirely wrong,” Vergil replies. “My sleeping habits are unusual even for the likes of us.”

"Wait. Wait, did you just...did you just say I'm right about something?"

"Do you always surprise even yourself whenever you make the occasional valid observation?"

“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” Nero says before he’s interrupted by the resurgence of the queasiness in his stomach. He rests a hand over it as if that'll somehow convince it to ease off. “What the hell happened? How did I get here? Where's Nico? And Kyrie? And what was that thing? I’ve never fought it before.”

Vergil considers him, the hand on his stomach, then turns away, walking out, leaving the door open like he thinks Nero’s just gonna follow like a cooperative little duckling.

Pulling a face, Nero does.

In the more familiar walls of his father's study, he gratefully lowers himself down onto the chaise longue, the tension knotted tight in the base of his neck and spine already beginning to unravel. “Sounds like we’re the only ones in. Did Dante fall down a hole somewhere and you just leave him there?” Nero pauses. “OK, that does sound like something you’d do.”

“You can find out for yourself if he returns.”

“ _If_?”

Vergil makes a quiet sound of amusement. Glass glints in his hand: an unstoppered vial of smooth green liquid. “Drink this. It should help with any lingering after-effects.”

Nero stows away any comments about not fancying a spinach smoothie right now. “It looks like how I feel,” he says and tips the contents into his mouth, swallowing the sourness of it down with a grimace. “What is it with these things and always tasting like shit?”

“There does seem to be an unfortunate correlation.”

His grimace still twisting his mouth, Nero curls his fingers around the empty vial too tightly, but the clearly reinforced glass doesn't crack. “What was the demon doing to me, anyway? It felt like..." There's a lump in his throat. Vestiges of the panic he'd felt spark in his blood. "Like it was pulling something outta me.”

“Your demonic energy,” Vergil says. "It was feeding on it." 

“Feeding on it,” Nero repeats hollowly. “Feeding on _me_.” 

“It is cannibalism of sorts, yes. The Hasdarr are one of the cleverer species. They hide behind wards; their talons have a secretion that induces paralysis. Nico managed to rescue you, but had to contact my brother and I when she couldn't wake you. I decided it was best to keep you here for the night.” 

“And the demon?” 

“Dead,” Vergil says dismissively like it's a foregone conclusion and Nero pictures it easily: his father with that horrific speed, an incandescent blur annihilating with ease. 

He pretends he can’t feel the grin of his demon beneath his own teeth, the fangs edged with vengeful approval. 

“So you helped save me.”

“Are you surprised?” 

Yes, says something in Nero. The hidden and hiding thing. 

But in the end: “No, actually. I'm not,” Nero says. “I guess I should thank—”

“I’d rather,” his father interrupts coolly, holding his hand open, “you just returned the vial.”

“Oh. Sure, yeah. Here.” Awkwardly, Nero hands it over, looking down at his right arm, the human normality of it, as he does so. "My demon...when I called for him, he didn’t answer. He couldn’t, like he’d gotten paralyzed too.”

“And did that unnerve you.”

It's not a question, not really. Nero knows Vergil’s already aware of the answer; he just wants to hear Nero admit it.

Nero’s mouth purses grudgingly around the admission. “Point for you, right? Proof that I needed him. Relied on him. On my demon side.” 

“Generous of you to keep score."

“That’s it? That's all you’re gonna say? Chance for you to stick the knife in and you’re gonna stop there?”

“What more is there to say," Vergil replies, settling himself back down at his desk, and, well, Nero can't really deny that. 

“There could be more of those things hiding in the rest of the mines,” Nero says. “I’ll need to check, but if they’re keeping themselves locked behind wards, it’s gonna be tough. I only managed to put a tiny crack in the one I found before the demon pulled the entire thing—and me—down, so..." He clears his throat. Lets the unspoken question reverberate through the silence till it reaches his father.

At length, Vergil says, “It’ll mean I’ll have to come to Fortuna."

Nero fiddles with the hem of his borrowed shirt. They’ve largely been skirting around Fortuna in their conversations; it’s become a kind of forbidden territory, domain that's off-bounds to Vergil purely because it’s where Nero lives, where he's safe. Supposed to be, anyway. “You up for it?” he asks.

“Am I really the one who should be asked that?”

“I'm fine with it," Nero manages. His father’s skepticism is palpable. Moreover, it's grating ‘cause it’s not exactly unfounded. Nero firms up his spine, his voice, and says, “I have to be."

Vergil looks at him with those vivisecting eyes, as if trying to discern the truth, the strength of Nero's resolve. Then he nods, like he actually understands. 

Nero lets out a breath. Now that he's looking closer, he notes with surprise the new addition to his father's desk, its burnished mahogany shining gently under the lights. “A violin. You got a violin.” 

“Owing to my brother’s weakness for sentiment and perpetual disregard of his financial situation,” but there's no real mockery in how Vergil's gaze approaches fondness, seems to cradle the gift. 

“I didn’t know you could play," Nero says and immediately wants to take it back. It's stupid and obvious. There’s an overabundance of how much he doesn’t know about Vergil. At the same time, he remembers V humming to himself, low and sonorous, during a lull in battle; V with sardonic blitheness mimicking the playing of a violin while his familiars tore demons to shreds around him. 

“I learned as a child," Vergil says. 

It's easier to imagine Dante as a child than it is Vergil. Something about his father prohibits it, some preternatural quality—his movement is too smooth, his eyes are too steady or face too calm. No one can look at Vergil and not instinctively know that he is different somehow, the same way an animal intuitively recognizes a predator. 

“But that was...a while back," Nero settles on. "You still remember how?”

“It’s curious,” his father says, “what the body remembers even after so many years.” There is a pause and the pause has words in it, unvoiced. This isn’t unusual for him; his silences tend to have life to them, a resonating depth instead of empty space. “What it chooses to hold onto, despite it all.” 

What survives despite it all, like Vergil himself. 

"Who taught you?" Nero asks. 

Vergil runs a gentle finger along one curve of the violin's body. "My mother."

The beautiful face sealed behind glass on Dante’s desk, her hair sheets of gold, her eyes green, her smile kind. V had had those eyes. They’re somewhere still in his father, looking out, and, in a place more cloistered, surviving strains of her kindness. 

“Musical gene must’ve skipped me,” Nero says, “but that’s all right. Kyrie’s singing more than makes up for it.” 

“What prevents you from learning an instrument?”

“You kidding?” Nero laughs, disbelieving. “I seem like a piano or violin kinda guy to you? Maybe a guitar, I guess, but…" He looks down at his hands. They're rough, they've always been rough. Fitting for schoolyard scraps, for knocking demons down, for the dirty work he'd done for the Order, not for flowing smooth over the strings of a violin or the keys of a piano—but it isn’t as if Vergil's, with all the things he's done, are any better. “I’m not interested in embarrassing myself like that."

“She would’ve wanted to teach you,” Vergil says, and a sharp, warm throb starts up Nero's chest alongside the beat that's already there. “She would’ve wanted me to teach you.”

“I wish I could’ve met her,” Nero confesses. The throb in his chest echoes hot behind his eyes. 

“Yes,” Vergil says, quiet.

"Can you..." Nero trails off with a glance at the violin.

His father remains still, though he must've understood the half-voiced request.

He remains still for so long that it comes as a surprise when he finally reaches for the violin. He checks the strings, applies something to the bow. Lifts the instrument to his shoulder and dips his chin down. The bow drifts over the strings in steady, sleek movements, and his father's hands, his blood-stained, killer's hands, draw out a melody so light and delicate and tender that it should have been impossible to have ever come from him. 

* * *

With a low hum, the air obediently splits itself open along the lines of the Yamato’s clean, precise incisions. The portal is a rippling, heaving, oceanic darkness at the center and a sizzle of crackling white-blue light at the edges.

Nero’s stomach clenches at seeing it. In the dimness of the garage, the portal had been painful to look at, its light too harsh a halo like looking right at the sun. 

“So I just step through?" he says. "And bam, I’m back in Fortuna just like that? Is it gonna feel weird? Like...you know how when you get into an elevator and it goes too fast and sometimes your stomach goes a little funny? Do I need to prepare myself for anything?”

“You’re babbling,” Vergil cuts in. 

“Think he needs you to hold his hand, Verge,” Dante adds, ‘cause he’s an asshole like that. 

“I’m not scared,” Nero retorts. “It’s just new.” 

Pointedly, he steps closer to the portal, staring into its gently, almost hypnotically, fluctuating abyss.

“They're waiting for you on the other side.”

“Yeah." Nero looks over his shoulder. "I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“At the Hills,” his father confirms. 

“Frankly, I’m wounded— _wounded_ —that I’m not invited,” Dante says. “Wounded, I tell you.”

“Apply repulsive amounts of pizza to the supposed wound,” says Vergil flatly. “You’ll make a full recovery.” 

“Shit, you should've been a doctor,” Dante replies, grinning, slinging a casual arm around Vergil’s shoulders that his father, though he glances side-long at Dante, for once doesn’t immediately shrug off.

It’s a weirdly idyllic picture of them both. The way it could've—should've—been all along. Maybe is, in some other world, where his father never jumps into the Underworld at nineteen. Where he learns early of Nero's existence and Nero gets to grow up in the Devil May Cry and his father and his uncle are always there to send him off each time he leaves. 

“Is something the matter?” Vergil asks, when Nero must've been staring for too long. 

“No. No, there's nothing wrong,” Nero says, and in that moment, it's wholly true. 

* * *

The kids are playing outside in the front garden, Nico watching over them, and they're laughing, happy and free, as children should always laugh. 

Nero walks into his and Kyrie's bedroom to the sound of that boisterous joy, heading over to the modest desk sitting against the wall. It has three drawers and Nero opens the last one, taking out the book sheltered inside like the heirloom that it really is.

The engraved _V_ shines smoothly as it rises into the light. Nero handles it delicately, as if his father's human heart, the part of him he'd so hated and discarded and had been dying right in front of Nero's eyes, is contained right here in the gold and gleam of the symbol and Nero must be careful with it. Must do his part in helping to preserve it.

Dante had talked about what Nero deserved to inherit. He hadn't been wrong, but he hadn't been entirely right, either. Flipping slowly through the aged pages, inhaling the remnants of a scent that might be from a house he's never been to, a home he'll never know, Nero thinks there is something valuable in the inheritance, after all.

When Kyrie finds him, her arms slipping warm around him, her head resting in the space between his shoulder-blades, Nero says, "Would you be OK with it if I…I think I wanna...”

He knows the magnitude of what he's asking. He knows she hasn’t been back down to the garage since that day. 

“It’s all right if you say no,” he says. This is just as much her home as it is his.

“If you’re trying,” she says after a while, “then I think I’ll try, too.” 

Nero covers one of her hands with his and squeezes gently. “There's something else, actually,” he says. “I think you could help me with it.” 

* * *

Nero gets to the mines early, but his father is even earlier, a solitary figure glancing up at the postcard-perfect silhouette of the mountains set against the cloudless sky. He's dressed in a neat white shirt and black trousers, dark brown boots. It should make him less austere, more everyday and approachable—but, no, there’s that too-smooth movement, that too-steady gaze, giving him away as something atypical, not entirely human.

“I’d say sorry for keeping you waiting," Nero says, "but I’m not actually late.” He takes up looking at the mountains himself when Vergil doesn't reply. "Is it weird being back here?"

Minutes later, he at least receives an answer to that.

"I remember the village. The town. These mountains and this sky. I could deceive myself into thinking nothing has changed—and yet so much has. You are proof of that."

"So are you," says Nero.

"So am I," his father agrees. He starts walking through into the dark mouth of the mine. "In hindsight, however, I should've killed Sanctus the moment I saw him."

Credo flashes through Nero's mind, solemn-faced, prim in his impeccable white uniform; he shakes his head to dispel the memory, pushes past the sore twinge of loss, and follows Vergil inside. "Would've saved me and a whole lotta of people some trouble, that's for sure." 

It’s easier than he’d expected, working alongside his father, hunting alongside him. They move steadily through meandering, dimly lit paths, letting the disparate threads of scents in the air guide them. Minor scavenger demons scurry out—or scurry away—but Nero doesn't let them get very far.

Vergil just keeps walking on ahead, unconcerned. The rare instances he does choose to engage, his hand simply closes around the hilt of his katana and the demons die, dissected into surgically neat segments, like all it takes is that one small movement.

The first ward they find is beneath another walkway, the water a beautiful pale blue that Nero can seemingly see right down into. He figures it's easier for Vergil, what with the Yamato’s inimitable sharpness and ability to cut through whatever she wishes; still, Vergil keeps her sheathed and holds his hand above the motionless pool.

A second later, a loud glass-shatter rupture. A second after that: a screech and a demonic body disintegrating.

“Simple,” Vergil says. 

“Maybe I'd agree,” Nero says, "if I'd actually caught what just happened." 

"Do as you did before, but try imagining your power as something physical." Vergil gestures to the Red Queen. “Like a sword.”

"Like a sword," Nero says to himself at the second ward, kneeling down with his hand held out, fingers slightly splayed. He's momentarily transported back to his days on the Order's training grounds, sparring beneath the heaviness of summer heat and of sharp, scrutinizing eyes noting his faults, measuring his skill, his worth, except it's much worse now, his father's appraisal a singular kind of pressure. 

He takes a breath, then pictures the Red Queen in his arm; imagines the way she seems to sing for him in battle like a true Devil Arm, the scalding heat of her flames lashing out at his command. Her fierce steel and dependable sturdiness.

It doesn't work. The minutes stretch on. Not even a small crack this time. 

“Focus," Vergil says. 

“I _am_ ,” Nero replies. He shakes out his arm, tries again. Fails again. Sighing, he stands when the demon concealed beneath does Nero's job for him, dispelling the ward and rising out from the depths.

The third, fourth, and fifth wards are just as much a bust and Nero's aggravation spikes higher and higher each time 'cause now he's starting to feel it, a shadow of movement in his arm, rippling somewhere between the skin and muscle. Something nascent is trying to build, trying to catch, not quite making it but there all the same. 

Potential. Capacity. 

"It's not happening," he says reluctantly after the sixth ward, the water sloshing around freely with the barrier broken. 

"Appears not," Vergil says, no censure, no disappointment. He makes a thoughtful sound. “Did Dante ever tell you what woke his demon form for the first time?”

Nero shakes his head. "We've never talked about it." 

“He and I were fighting. I stabbed him with the Rebellion.”

“'Course you did."

“His demon woke to save his life. Why did your demon wake?”

“I don't see how that's got to do with anything.”

“Answer the question." 

“’Cause I didn’t want to lose anyone else again, all right?" Nero says, frowning harshly against the vulnerability of the admission, defiant against it all the same. "I already lost family and I didn’t want to lose more.” Averting his eyes, he looks at the walls on the far side, slick and shimmering beneath rivulets of water. “I’m not talking ‘bout just Dante, either.”

“You should’ve been his son,” Vergil says, except it doesn't sound like the insult his father could've easily turned it into. It sounds sincere. “You’re more like him than you know.”

Nero kicks absently at a small stone on the ground, sending it skittering across the pool. He turns back to Vergil, asks, "What makes you say that?” and sees his father's gaze go strange, simultaneously distant and focused, caught on something but that something's in another world, another dimension.

"He also wanted to hold on," Vergil says, "when no one would have blamed him for letting go." And it's that something—someone; one of the Dantes still left safely intact in his dismembered memory—that Vergil's talking to, when he murmurs, "I wouldn't have blamed him."

* * *

“What about you?” Nero asks after a while. They're deeper in the mines and the ground beneath his feet is steep, uneven. One of his wing-hands shoots out to dig claws into the wall when he stumbles. “What woke your demon? Don't tell me it was Dante stabbing you with the Yamato."

“No,” his father says, the word echoing within the confines of the stone chamber, and Nero relaxes because thank fuck for small mercies, and then Vergil says, “It wasn’t Dante who stabbed me.” Ahead of them, the path diverges into four routes. His father considers each one before focusing on the leftmost path. "This way."

Nero's more concerned with, "You told me once that your demon woke when you were still a kid." And even earlier: V in that torn up playground, recalling a demon attack on Red Grave. _In fact, I was playing right here_. A gesture with his cane. _That was the house_. "It's fucked up that it happened to you like that."

"It wasn't ideal, no," Vergil says, level, without inflection.

"You always say it like that,” Nero says. “In that voice. Like the pain never matters."

"It was a long time ago. The demons were inconsequential and I killed them soon after."

"Does that somehow make what happened any better?"

"It makes it a long time ago, Nero. Agonizing over it now won't change anything."

"But it helped make you who you are."

"Is that what this is about?" Vergil says. "Trying to understand who I am?" He still hasn't stopped walking, and Nero’s matched his strides to his father's and yet it’s still as if he's having to run to keep up with him. Catch up to him. 

"You're like this equation,” Nero says. “This equation that I'm trying to reverse-solve, when I should’ve always known you, and it's not—it's not—"

"It's not what?"

"It's not fair.”

Like he doesn't already know that life isn't fair. Like he's the fucking child he already told Vergil he isn't. The child that he never got to be to the father that Vergil never got to be.

" _Shit_ ," Nero says and stops and thumps the side of his fist against the nearest wall. The sting of stone grazing his skin is fleeting. "This isn't the way this was supposed to go."

Belatedly, he notices his father's footsteps have also come to a pause. 

"It isn't," Vergil says, his head turning a degree so that he's half talking to Nero over his shoulder. "Fair, that is, but it's what we have. Isn't that better than nothing?"

It is. It is better than nothing. It's still more than Nero had dreamed of having and he grabs onto the thought, holds it safe in the cradle of his hands: a small, vulnerable fire he can’t let die out. "I didn't think I'd get to hear you admit something like that," he says. 

And Vergil replies, "Haven't I been saying it all along?"

It takes a few seconds, Nero's brow creased with confusion, but it dawns on him: the books, the strange conversations. The sunlit days in the warmest, brightest room in the Devil May Cry, where he'd ended up falling asleep last night to the melody of Vergil's violin, waking warm to sunshine in his eyes and the quilt from his father’s bedroom draped over him. 

Vergil standing here in the mines at all, simply because Nero had asked him to. 

Turning his head back to the front, Vergil resumes walking. He doesn't seem to be expecting any response.

Nero gives him one anyway; thinks it's only right. "Yeah," he says as he falls back into step with his father. "Yeah, I guess you have been."

The next ward is sitting quietly over a small hidden route slashed between the rocks, the surrounding air distinctly flat, leeched empty of all pressure and temperature. 

"Think," Vergil says, "about the Qlipoth again, running to its apex where my brother and I were fighting."

Nero aims an incredulous look at him. “Are you serious right now?”

"That was when your arm restored itself, wasn't it? Recall what propelled your power in that moment."

Vergil's assessing gaze drops over Nero's right arm, and though Nero’s skin itches and crawls with an impulse to turn away, Nero steels himself against it. He bears the itch. Lets it scrape and chafe its way through him till it has no choice but to subside, wandering back into its hiding place, and once it’s there, subdued for now, Nero curls his right hand into a fist, watching how the knuckles whiten. “You were the reason I lost this arm,” he says evenly, factually, and reaches out towards the ward. “You’re also part of why I got it back.”

He thinks about it: running, flying, up that pathway to where his father and his uncle were intent on each other, the breath short in his lungs, his heart smashing against his rib cage, a rapid, jarring tingle and simmer from elbow downwards as bone, sinew, muscle, and skin threaded themselves back together into the arm that had been ripped from him. 

He thinks about strength, having enough of it to do what you couldn’t before. Holding on instead of letting go.

The ghost sensation in his arm makes itself known again, rustling weakly, barely disturbing his blood.

Nero clenches his teeth, says, “I can feel something, but it’s like it can’t fully come out.”

“It will,” Vergil says in a voice that invites no disagreement.

Nero glances at his father, who looks back steadily, who waits there patiently as if he’s prepared to remain just like that for as long as it takes because somehow it's a certainty for him, simply a matter of time till Nero can do it.

It’s faith, Nero realizes, Vergil's faith in his ability, and Nero grabs onto that thought from before, about how having something—his father, here, right next to him—is better than having nothing. He grabs it, wields it like he's calling on a Devil Arm of his own, and the rustle in his arm rustles again like it really is being called upon. It stirs and _keeps_ stirring, a hurricane swirling into existence in his blood, gaining and gaining strength. Heat, molten and viscous, swells in his shoulder, pooling in on itself.

"I think—" Nero begins sharply, "holy shit, it's—" and not much more, 'cause between one blink and the next, a twisting, electric flood careens wildly down the rest of his arm and the ward bursts open violently, punctured right through hard enough that Nero feels the rushing heat of its eruption, has to turn his face away from the pressure. The nearby walls split open some with zigzagging cracks, rocks shaking out to smash against the ground. 

"Well," his father says mildly, "that's acceptable for now." 

Wide-eyed, Nero waves a hand through the space in front of him, marveling at the lack of obstruction. “It worked," he says, awed. "It actually worked."

"As I said it would." But there's approval, unmistakable and irrefutable, in the slight nod Vergil gives Nero. Up ahead, erratically scurrying movement darts into sight, aiming right for them. "And now you have a demon to kill." 

"Yeah, I do," Nero crows, "'cause, just in case you missed it, I just broke a fucking ward." 

"How ironic it'd be," Vergil says musingly, "if the demon succeeded in paralyzing you once again because you were preoccupied with celebrating." 

Nero just laughs, revving up Red Queen till she flares up in a burst of fire, his right arm pulsing loudly with power and in perfect harmony. 

* * *

See, one time, Nero had in fact admitted, “I thought if anyone could be my father, it would be you,” and Dante had simply nodded like he’d known Nero would utter those words one day. 

“I figured something like that must’ve crossed your mind. You dodged a bullet there.” 

“You really believe that you’d’ve made a worse father?”

“I wouldn’t have made what you’d call a good father at any rate.” Dante was looking straight ahead, but Nero had gotten the feeling he wasn’t looking at the street at all. “You know, there was a time I wasn't so fond of my father.” 

“Sparda was a hero," Nero had said. "It’s the first thing anyone ever says about him, even outside of Fortuna.” 

“Not much of a hero when you leave your wife and your kids behind, knowing they’re in danger just ‘cause they’re _your_ wife and your kids." Dante had shrugged. Squinted at something in the distance as if the daylight could really be bright enough to bother eyes like his. "I was an angry teen. Not really in the mood for forgiving. Me and Vergil still don't know what happened to him exactly, but we can guess.”

“If he somehow walked into your life right now after all this time, would you be all right with that? Would you welcome him back?”

“You're the expert on that here, Nero,” Dante had replied. “Why don’t you tell me.” 

And Nero had said nothing. 

He knows, though. He knows what Dante would’ve done: the same thing Nero is doing, turning to face his father when they’re back in Ferrum Hills, standing beneath a sky gone pink and purple with twilight. There's smoke rising from one of the chimneys in the village, lazily drifting upwards to coalesce with the clouds, and there's a rise of laughter, too, muffled by the closing of a door somewhere. 

"Don't think we'll be getting any more trouble from those things," Nero says. "Not for a while at least." 

"If you do, now you know how to deal with them."

Nero's right arm still vibrates softly with the lingering cadence of his power. Ultimately, it had been inconsistent; he'd managed to break only two more wards after the first, but it's still enough success to keep him buoyant. He touches his arm, curling his fingers over the thrumming. "I still need more practice, though, right?"

“A significant amount,” Vergil replies. “Or at least enough so that you don't bring the ceiling down onto yourself."

“Anyone ever tell you that you really don’t have to go for brutal honesty all the time?” 

“It's amusing," Vergil says, "and I'm quite fond of being amused.” 

“That doesn't come across as disturbing at all," Nero says. "Thanks, anyway, for..." He makes an encompassing gesture. _For everything_. 

Vergil simply nods. His fingers, never too far from the hilt of his katana, begin to move. 

"Wait," Nero blurts out, loud enough to surprise even himself. "Wait. I, uh. I was wondering, actually, if maybe—" he pauses around the shape of the cautious, vulnerable words taking up space in his mouth, then throws them out there in one quick rush of, "—if maybe you might wanna come home." 

His father just stares at him.

"My house," Nero clarifies hastily. "Come to my house."

Vergil stares some more. Asks, eventually, "Why?"

Nero scowls. He hadn't assumed that Vergil would readily accept, had figured it would more likely be the opposite, but the question stings more than he'd been prepared for, easily jabbing into the softer parts of him that his father's got a knack for finding. "If you don't wanna come over, just say so." 

"That's not what I said," Vergil says, which—yeah, Nero has to give him that.

"Then what...a test? You think I'm testing you or something?"

"Testing yourself, more likely. I would've thought it too soon for you to be inviting me to your home. Are you doing it to prove something to yourself?" Vergil's eyes narrow. "Because you have to?"

"If I said yes to that, you'd leave, right? OK, yeah, I get it. You don't want me to ask you over 'cause it's some kinda test, but 'cause I actually want you there. I won't lie and say that proving something to myself has nothing to do with this, but—I do. I do want you there." Nero shrugs. Simply and honestly, the best way he knows how to do things, he says, "You're my dad and I want you there." 

Vergil seems to be considering the words, his face unreadable. Nero waits. There's movement happening below the surface, in the deep sea darkness of his father. Ice is shifting. Something is resolving itself and once it does, Nero will have his answer. 

When it comes, the answer is: Vergil's fingers sweeping up the Yamato's hilt, not to unsheathe her, but to reach up higher, to rest lightly against Nero's hair. It's a whispering touch. A tiny gesture countless fathers did with their sons without thinking.

Nero's head almost bows under it. A tightness in him, something that's been wound up and rigid all this time without his knowing, unravels. Finds reprieve. He breathes and the breath comes easy. 

"Shall we, then?" Vergil says, taking his hand back.

"Shall—wait, really?"

"Did you want to argue over it some more?"

"I just thought...maybe you _wouldn't_ wanna come over. I wouldn’t have been surprised if you’d decided it wasn’t worth your time."

"You shouldn't think so much," Vergil says. "It might stop you from being wrong as often."

Nero stares, 'cause there's a gently amused lift to his father's lips. A real smile free of any mocking edges, any scorn or fabrication. 

This is his father’s gift, an ability Nero isn’t sure Vergil knows he has. His hidden warmth with its quietness, its rarity that only makes each sighting memorable. Makes you willing to do what it takes so that he'll smile his faint little smile at you.

"OK," Nero says. "I mean, OK, let's go. Not OK to the other thing; I think just the right amount, thanks." They turn back to the path down to the village, where they'll get stares, he knows, they'll get questioning eyes glancing between him and his father, noting what similarities there are. Glances that Nero won't really mind for once. "It's gonna be awkward—at first at least—'cause of, you know.”

"I'm aware." 

"But the kids don't know about that. That it was you. I didn't want to tell them." 

And he won’t for some time, because he doesn’t want them to be afraid, but, more truthfully, it's also to shield his father. Spare him some judgment while he still could, like Dante had wanted to. So, yeah, maybe Nero does share more in common with his uncle than with his father, maybe people look at him, see his brash, open emotion, his heart pinned to his sleeve, and think he's Dante's son, couldn't possibly be Vergil's, but fact is that he _is_ Vergil's son and that isn't the end of the world. It's just a different world than the one he'd expected. 

"They can get a little rowdy. Talk a mile a minute, ask about everything under the sun."

"Isn't that the nature of children? It doesn't trouble me." 

"They—" Nero thinks about it. Realizes: "They're gonna love you. They're gonna ask a hundred and one questions and you're just gonna answer them and they're gonna think you know everything. That you're god or something."

"One day," Vergil says, "but for now, I'm only his son."

Nero crushes his laughter into a cough 'cause he can't have his father knowing Nero thinks he's got a sense of humor. “I also found some stuff you might be interested in. Music. Violin sheets." He scratches at his ear. “I was told that some of them...some of them even a beginner could try and learn.” 

"Oh? Is there someone seeking lessons?" 

"There just might be, yeah, if you were interested in that sorta thing." 

“Then I suppose I'll have to take a look," Vergil says, and Nero lets slips a smile. 

They don’t talk much after that. It doesn’t bother him now as it used to in the beginning. 

The companionable silence only reminds him of something he'd caught in his usual casual scanning of the books in his father's study, a sentence he'd glimpsed while absently flipping through the pages: _But a wound must be soothed at the right time and not when it is raging._

He hadn't thought anything of it at all at the time, putting the book back, the words and whatever meaning they might've held scattering from his mind like wind-blown sand, but now, walking home with his father by his side, their steps easy as if they’ve always walked this path together, those words return to Nero as though carried back by the same breeze that had first dispersed them.

It's what we’re doing, he thinks, the two of us. We're soothing wounds. Our own and each other’s.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) apologies for any clashes with DMC 4 and 5 novels; i am bad DMC fan and worked from hazy memory and also engaged in the time-honoured tradition of Just Making Shit Up.
> 
> 2) "OCEANUS: But Prometheus, don’t you know that the best medicine for a raging anger is words?
> 
> PROMETHEUS: Yes, I do, Oceanus. But a wound must be soothed at the right time and not when it is raging."
> 
> — _Prometheus Bound_ , written by my dude Aeschylus specifically and solely so that i, an eternity later, could plot for months to somehow plug his words into a DMC fic and finally manage it thanks to dadgil.
> 
> 3) in hindsight, maybe i shouldn't have ever used the word "wholesome" in relation to a fic where Nero dreams of his father crushing his heart. they don't even hug!! i'm a MONSTER.


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